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The definition of "anime" has become more blurred, and confusing.

In most forums you cannot do anything at all about them so there is no point in worrying about it. You can't suppress them and responding to them is playing their game. The most effective thing you can do is ignore them.

That is why I am here in a moderated forum. The really toxic people are not allowed and we can have a reasonable discussion.

It is also really funny how kids shows have had pandering for adults, I guess it would make those shows more interesting to those who view cartoons as mostly childish, I have never had that problem because as an animation fan I find a lot of kids' programming fascinating. Especially ones like Bluey that seem to earnestly try to appeal to large age ranges and not merely be kids show with a bit of fan service for adult animation fans.

I did like that you mentioned Gargoyles (though I haven't seen the Mask cartoon), because that one always seemed very anime-like in the way it seems to be made so it is easily digestible to children but also has a lot of depth for more mature fans, that describes a lot of shonen and shojo programming. The main difference to me is that shows like that are extreme outliers when you look at the history of US animation and thus we don't really have a genre convention to identify animation that is made for children and adults in a way that goes beyond pandering the way you pointed out Arthur doing. I think shows like Gargoyles, Teen Titans, and anime could all be organized under such a genre if one is ever created and that it would be helpful to have such a label for sure. I do also think this type of media is becoming more prevalent, Avatar was mentioned but with stuff like Over the Garden Wall and The Owl House there is definitely animation out there targeting the traditional children demographic and making more mature stories. I definitely get what you mean by saying there is animation like that out there and I just wish we could call it something more distinct.

I do also want to briefly mention the way some genres are getting new material is really interesting. Bluey is structured like a young children's show but is made with so much heart and beauty that people of any age often enjoy it, Inside Job clearly has a lot of adult humor animation DNA but also digs more into how the characters would change over time in a serialized way that goes beyond slow moving episodic fair like Futurama. That is all I will say as to not get to off topic, but the way that young children and adult specific animation have slowly been becoming more diverse is something I like a lot.

I'm not worried about the rabid toxic fans out there or even on ANN forum (although it's a different matter on MAL/Myanimelist forum). I'm worried about the effect of toxic rabid fans is doing to the fandom image, I mean as I said, I don't like it'll make the fandom look racist/xenophobic when it comes to reaction toward anime being outsourced to foreign studio outside of Japan.

I saw one fan attacking Netflix's Castlevania and the studio that did the animation calling it a "DEI anime".

In October of 2016, EDM artist Porter Robinson and Madeon created a music video in conjunction with A-1 Pictures and Crunchyroll. The music video was pretty fantastic and if you haven’t seen it, I suggest you check it out below. However, the whole, what is Anime argument caused quite a bit of a stir. The r/anime page on Reddit took the video off the page for a while because of disagreement as to whether or not it was actually Anime.

mdo7‒
Some people clearly have too much time on their hands.....

You know I was just randomly looking around on the web, and I didn't know about this controversy that pre-dated the anime argument debate. And I can't believe I missed this when ANN first talked about this AMV back in 2016 (I was busy doing something else and was not active on ANN at the time). I was reading this 2017 blog on the complicated answer to "what is anime?" by an anime fan named Matthew Magnus Lundeen (I don't know who he is, can somebody tell me?).

What you pointed out about that decision by a mod and MAL moving goalposts is very informative on the topic as well. I think that besides the technical definition (majority produced in Japan) which requires debate on a case by case basis and the marketing definition (anything from anywhere that's like anime), I think general forums should have a very inclusive definition that includes anything worked on by Japanese animators at all. Even if you really truly thought Shelter wasn't anime, the smart move for discussion sake is to allow it. If you really think Shelter isn't anime, you should leave up all the people making those arguments so that people can have a better idea next time and not just take the post down in my opinion. For that reason, I think databases like MAL and general anime discussion subreddits should not be gatekeeping what is and isn't allowed that closely.

Unfortunately people love arguing about that stuff and some may even see it as noble goal to get Shelter off the anime subreddit or webtoons off of MAL rather than have a vigorous and edifying conversation.

This is why this debate will never end, and we'll probably have more flame wars over this.

So TL:DR: the definition of "anime" has become too broad, too ambiguous, too confusing, too misleading because of all the things I mentioned above